The Conference of the Year

I just received a text from a friend in Australia. “What liberty conference in the United States should I attend this year?”

Good timing! The answer is easy: FEEcon, June 15-18, 2017, Atlanta, Georgia. This is the first of what will be an annual event. In its first year, it will have 75 speakers, top thinkers, writers, artists, and filmmakers in the liberty space. There will be panels, speeches, and presentations on every aspect of human liberty.

It’s happening at just the right time. For 71 years, FEE has done the essential intellectual work in defense of the free society. It all began in 1946, with dissident published strategies, seminars, and periodicals. It began the font of a new approach to economic life and the relationship between the individual and the state.

The New FEE

One way to think about FEEcon: it is the conference version of what you read on the website every day. Today, FEE is on the leading edge of the production and distribution of ideas that provide a way out of the current morass and point the way toward a freer world. As you know, FEE is doing this every day, and attracting millions of readers. In one day, FEE has more customers than its flagship publication had in one year in the 1950s.

One way to think about FEEcon: it is the conference version of what you read on the website every day. It’s a chance to meet leading intellectuals. Just as important, it is a chance for sincere and dedicated champions of freedom (or the merely curious!) to meet each other. It will strengthen the network and the cultural movement that is focussed more on ideals and principles than on political machinations.

It’s ideas, not powerful people, that drive forward the motion of history over the long term. That is why it is deeply and desperately important that all of us learn, share, and work together for a solution to the problem of despotism in the world. We’ve learned this over the decades since FEE’s founding. In the early days, there seemed to be no hope for a resurgence of genuine liberalism. FEE lit a candle in the darkness and it set off a global change.

Hope in Our Times

Central planning of the 20th century sort is on the run. The politics of the world is in upheaval. The absolutist approaches of the past are under pressure as never before. One paradigm has failed and another will take its place. But which one? That will be up to us.

Technology has made it possible to curate the world you experience ever more. You have to step away from the headlines to see the bigger truth – that the world is embracing freedom. This is generating prosperity never before experienced in human history. States are rolling back their ambitions and individuals are being empowered. Just consider: since 1981, the number of people living in poverty in the world has fallen by 78%. This is not an accident; it is happening because of the advance of entrepreneurship, market creativity, technology, and broadened trade.

And think of your own life. Technology has made it possible to curate the world you experience ever more. You choose friends from around the globe. You choose your networks and communities. You choose your diet, exercise, profession, and lifestyle generally. Opportunities have never been more vast to make choices about education, travel, transportation, entertainment, hobbies, and lifestyles.

New Audiences Daily

Your presence at the very first FEEcon will help make it a wild success.The purpose of FEEcon is to make that possible, and enormously fun. After 71 years, FEE is in a position to take it to a new level and to a new audience. And while websites are fun, nothing can compare to the in-person experience of learning from experts, meeting friends, and toasting the rise of a new way of thinking about economics, politics, law, history, and culture.

FEEcon will feature as many as 75 presentations on topics such as entrepreneurship and business success, personal and professional development, digital solutions, policies for economic and social progress, economic essentials, political philosophy, poverty alleviation and prosperity, urban development and your neighborhood, science and technology, creativity and commerce, as well as updates on FEE’s remarkable plans for the near future.

You can choose a track that suits your interests.

Will you join us? Your presence at the very first FEEcon will help make it a wild success, and more firmly entrench the liberty movement as a cultural and intellectual presence in our time.

Think back to 1946 at FEE’s founding. They were dark times, but a generation decided to do something about it. We must also, especially since world trends are moving in the right direction. The future is shaped by the ideas we hold. We must embrace the right ones and learn to refute the wrong ones in order to build a future of peace and prosperity.

A free society is built by you and me, beginning in our own lives. The digital age has given us better tools for doing this than we've ever had before. Become a citizen of the real free world and help us spread the message of liberty. Join Liberty.me today.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is also a managing partner of Vellum Capital, CEO of the Atlanta Bitcoin Embassy, Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, Austria, Honorary Fellow of Mises Brazil, adviser to Acton Institute and Mackinac Institute, founder and Chief Liberty Officer of Liberty.me, an adviser to blockchain application companies, past editorial director of the Foundation for Economic Education and Laissez Faire Books, founder of the CryptoCurrency Conference, and author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and eight books in 5 languages. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

The Economics of Life Itself : Beautiful Anarchy is the writing platform of Jeffrey Tucker, in which he covers economics, art, popular culture, and politics from a pro-liberty, anti-state point of view.